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had a good rhuemy visit today

i went to my rhuemy today, and had a very good visit.

i discussed lots of things, some of them i am adding here:

1. i questioned about taking a daily asprin, to help thin the blood.
i was told that if you take plaquenil at a dosage of 400mg a day, you have more blood thinning from them than 1 asprin. therefore it will have no effect.

2. i am taking "stevia" instead of sugar. 2 main brand names in australia are natvia and optvia. this is a natural sugar from the stevia plant. main benifit of this sugar is it helps to lower the blood sugar level. i was advised that this has worked well in my case. the levels are dropping, back to normal range. with no other medical intervention.

3. i have been flare free for about 12 months now. my blood results are excellent, everything except my dehydration levels is now in the normal range. if this continues until our next appointment, i will be able to decrease my methotrexate, from 20 mg. i will still need to take plaquenil for life. and probably about 5mg of methotrexate, but we will start the decrease.

i still have bad fibromyalgia issues that keep me out of work, and on the disability, but my lupus is being controlled by my medication.

i am sharing this, not to brag, but to let you know, that i have gone from serious organ involvement, to a stable control.there is hope for all, that if your body accepts the medication, your symptoms can decrease. i know if i stop my medication, i will have serious health issues in a matter of weeks.

4. we discussed exercise. aquatic (slow, non strenuous) exercise is currently considered the best form of exercise for lupus sufferers. the reason for this is that you have full control on the amount of force you excert. also the body has boyancy in water. this reduces the stresses on the body. the best 2 form of water excercise are low impact aqua erobics and then casual swimming.

i hope that this information helps. remember that everyone is different. everyone reacts differently to lupus.

This is all such good news for me right now. I am in terrible pain and spasms in spite of so many meds. Today diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I will truly consider aquatic exercise. My shoulder feel llike someone has vice grips on my spine and spasms radiate across both sides of spine. I need to read and learn how to deal with this. I am so proud of all you have overcome! I've used stevia. Good for you for working so hard.

I must say that what you said about aspirin must be different from doctor to doctor because my cardiologist and my rhuemy kept me on both aspirin and plaquenil. You know there are always little things that doctors do differently and this may be one of them.

Now that I am home on my computer instead of typing from my phone I wanted to make sure that you knew how very much I appreciated your post. So often we get down because we are going through so much and we can't see an end in sight but this thread reminds us to keep looking at the end of the tunnel. It reminds us not to give up and that is very needed sometimes.

MariSuccess is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.